


No Walls Around My Heart

by Lomonaaeren



Series: Wednesday One-Shots [13]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Flashbacks, Hogwarts Eighth Year, M/M, Romance, Sharing a Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-04 14:58:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5338331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years ago, Harry and Draco got together. Now, they’re not too busy in the middle of the celebration to think about how it happened, at Hogwarts, in their eighth year, when sharing a room shoved them together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Another of my Wednesday one-shots, written for this prompt by aliasfanatic04: _I would love to see a story with H/D in an established relationship. They are getting ready to celebrate their ten year anniversary and both are spending the day thinking about how they got together. Happened in 8th year because they were forced to share a room together. Fighting lead to friendship lead to romance._ This will be a three-shot.

“Draco, do you  _really_ want these decorations?” Harry held up the stylized hearts strung on a golden chain and stared at them. They flashed and jingled, and Harry shook his head.  
  
“What do you mean— _oh_.” Draco came to a stop right at Harry’s shoulder, sounding disgusted, and Harry concealed a snicker. “No, I didn’t order those. Where did you find them?”  
  
“In this box from Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. Probably George’s idea of a joke.” Harry nudged the box away with one foot in case something else exploded out of it. “Anyway. I’m going to send them back with a note that they’d look nice at his and Angelina’s party in September.”  
  
“You do that. In the meantime, I need to make sure that all the benches are set up outside.”  
  
Harry straightened up and smiled at Draco’s back as he walked out to the back gardens of the Manor, cocking his head in the way he did when he considered what flowers he was going to arrange. Draco still strutted, sometimes, when he wasn’t thinking about it. He could still make snapping and cutting remarks with the best of them. But he was the man Harry knew and loved and touched and held at night now, and Harry didn’t mind a bit of strutting and snapping.  
  
The hearts in his hand started singing about “destined love.” Harry rolled his eyes as he slipped them back into the box and cast a soundproofing charm around them, then went to write his note with the suggestion for George and Angelina.  
  
Destined love? No. Far from it. At the time, Harry hadn’t even thought that he and Draco would survive the year.  
  
*  
  
“I’ll thank you not to shout, Mr. Potter.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes and squeezed his arms against his chest until they felt warmer than his anger did.  _Right. McGonagall is Headmistress now. And she fought as heroically at the Battle of Hogwarts as we all did, and she’s still trying to cope with Dumbledore’s and Snape’s deaths. No shouting at her._  
  
“I just don’t understand why Malfoy and I were assigned a room together, Headmistress McGonagall,” he finally said when he could open his eyes and not feel like killing someone with his stare like a basilisk. “I understand why you want us to share rooms. Just not why it’s him and me. There’ll be blood on the walls in a week.”  
  
McGonagall peered tiredly at him out of the thicket of paper on her desk. Harry could see envelopes that were from the Ministry, by their color, and St. Mungo’s, and a bunch that would be from the  _Daily Prophet_. Even though it was a few months after the battle, she was still busy with requests for interviews, reports on the progress of the rebuilding, questions about what she was going to do about things that only tangentially involved Hogwarts, and so on. Everyone was trying to make her into the next Dumbledore.  
  
“Because your names were the closest together alphabetically of all the returning students,” McGonagall said. “I had thought Malfoy was going to be with Parkinson, but her parents sent word at the last minute that she won’t be coming back.”  
  
Harry flinched a little. He was one of the few people who knew why that was, thanks to a trial in the bowels of the Ministry he’d had to both attend  _and_ keep his mouth shut about.  
  
“But you could move one of us elsewhere,” he said as calmly as he could. “I mean, I don’t think Malfoy would object if you did. And I certainly wouldn’t.” Harry thought it should be easy. If McGonagall was willing to put girls and boys in the same room, this wouldn’t be that large a change.  
  
McGonagall shook her head. “I am not…as in tune with the magic of the castle as Albus was, Mr. Potter. I convinced it to make the proper number of rooms. I convinced the house-elves to tend to you. But they would only tolerate a certain number of changes, and I believe I have arrived at the limit.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth, then shut it. Well. That was probably true. He saw it in the weary lines of McGonagall’s face.  
  
“I think things have changed since you and Mr. Malfoy last saw each other,” McGonagall told him, although her weary eyes were on her hands and she didn’t look up at him. Harry thought it might be more her hope than something she believed. “You testified at his trial. Mr. Malfoy has willingly let Aurors into his home to search for traces of You-Know-Who’s presence. It might be a more peaceful year than you think.”  
  
Harry squared his shoulders. He could do his part for his Head of House. “All right. I’ll try to make sure it stays that way.”  
  
McGonagall looked up with the kind of smile Harry knew was becoming increasingly rare for her. “Thank you.”  
  
*  
  
Draco sighed and waved his wand so that the bench floated down to be more perfectly in line with the Manor. It wouldn’t do much good for the people eating lunch if they had to stare at windows that flashed dazzlingly in the sun instead of smooth, calm lines of cool stone.  
  
“Can Tizzy be doing anything for Master Malfoy?”  
  
Draco turned to the house-elf and shook his head. Honestly, he had left only the cooking to the house-elves; Harry wanted to decorate himself, Draco didn’t trust their taste when it came to arranging the benches or the flowers, and there was little else that needed formal but mindless handling. “No, thank you, Tizzy.”  
  
“Elveses is—is wanting to do  _something_.”  
  
Draco blinked. Tizzy’s wringing hands confronted him with something he’d never had to think about until recently. After all, even after he had got together with Harry and his disapproving friends it had seemed only natural to use house-elves for whatever he wanted.  
  
But in the past few years, avoiding Granger’s lectures had become a bigger priority than simply having house-elves do things.  
  
“All right,” Draco said, when he had thought it through. “Make sure the grass is properly trimmed and the gravel in the front properly raked.” The Manor’s grounds and entrance path were both huge. They would keep even house-elves busy for hours.  
  
“Thank you,  _thank you_ , Master Malfoy!” Tizzy said, and bowed and bounced ecstatically before popping away.  
  
Draco snorted and turned back to aligning the benches and chairs, and casting Cushioning Charms. Some of the Manor’s old furniture was more elegant than comfortable.  
  
 _To think there was a time when I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to give Harry the time of day, and here I am, even obliging his friends._  
  
*  
  
It took Draco more than a fortnight to realize Potter was avoiding him.  
  
Potter was almost never in their shared room. The time he didn’t spend in classes or “emergency” study sessions with Granger for their upcoming NEWTS, he was on the Quidditch pitch. They had a window in their room that they could use to look at whatever part of the castle they wanted, and in practice Draco was the only one using it. He got used to glancing through it and seeing Potter looping and diving and soaring in the clear sunlight or driving rain.  
  
Draco had given up his Slytherin Seeker position of his own free will. Their team would lose this year, he knew it, given the pitiful remnants that had come back. Draco had no desire to have his name associated with anything else pathetic.  
  
But Potter hadn’t felt the need to do the same. He hadn’t adapted to the rooming situation, either, the way Draco had stoically promised himself that  _he_ would. He was running out on it.  
  
Draco waited until that evening, when Potter ducked in to change his Quidditch leathers. Usually he took fresh clothes to the pitch. Draco supposed he had to count himself lucky that Potter had forgotten this time.  
  
“So do you need to be out of the room so much to avoid punching me in the face, or what?”  
  
Draco glanced casually up from his Herbology book to meet Potter’s blinking, startled eyes. Then Potter pointed a finger at Draco, and his body began to vibrate as if he _was_  holding back the urge to punch him in the face.  
  
That hadn’t been what Draco expected. He felt cautiously for his wand.  
  
“I’m leaving so you can have the room to yourself,” Potter said. “So neither of us has to deal with this any more than we absolutely have to.”  
  
 _Punching me in the jaw would have been less painful_. Draco stood up. “I see,” he whispered. “You don’t believe people can change, do you? So much for all that cheerful, hopeful Gryffindor bollocks. I’m just going to be the evil Slytherin until the end of time.”  
  
Potter’s jaw flapped open. “I thought you liked your space! You haven’t been complaining!”  
  
“I didn’t know what you were doing. I just thought you were busy.” Draco lifted his head, and felt as though a wave was breaking around his shoulders. He should have known from the beginning, he supposed. People like Potter didn’t change their minds about people like Draco. He turned. “I know the Headmistress can’t cause the castle to make more rooms, but I can move back into the Slytherin seventh-year dorms. There are people who will welcome me there.”  
  
“This is  _ridiculous_ , Malfoy!” Potter bounded across the space between them, the strip of stone between their two beds, and grabbed Draco around the chest and waist. Draco turned, gasping aloud at the contact. “Think about it!” Potter almost shook him. “We haven’t hexed each other, we haven’t got angry at each other until today. This is the best we can hope for!”  
  
Draco reached down and locked his wrist against Potter’s, feeling the tight way Potter held him. “Let me go.”  
  
“Not until you  _listen!_  We were getting along—”  
  
“Because you completely avoided me and didn’t even give me the chance to speak to you.” Draco shook his head wildly when Potter opened his mouth to say something. “No,  _listen_ to me, you prat. You revealed more than you knew just now. You said this was the best we can hope for.”   
  
Potter fell back a step and let Draco go. He ran his hand through his hair. “I meant that. After the war and the way we fought before that? The way we were on  _opposite sides?_ It is.”  
  
“If we were on opposite sides, why did you save me in the Room of Hidden Things? Why testify for me? Why acknowledge that we owe each other life-debts?”  
  
Potter stared at him, at a loss. Then he turned his head. Draco waited, but he still didn’t say anything.  
  
“You know as well I do that you don’t think that way.” Draco felt as though he was stretching stiff limbs, long held in the same position. He sounded like himself for the first time since the war. Or the person he liked to think of as himself, anyway, precise and sure and interested. “Or you didn’t, recently. If you want to go back to a simple world of black and white morality, feel free. You won’t drag me with you.”  
  
“It’s—Malfoy, we both have a busy year, and we have NEWTs to study for, and I’m a Gryffindor and you’re a Slytherin—”  
  
“That  _doesn’t matter_. Or I would have kicked up more of a fuss at not being with other Slytherins.”  
  
Potter stood there, again. It was up to Draco to complete the thought. He shook his head and brushed past Potter, going to the desk on the other side of his bed, a huge one with books piled high.  
  
“You haven’t even given me the chance to say ordinary words to you, just in fear that they’d be sharp ones. It would be one thing if I’d attacked you and your friends again. Or if you hadn’t made that little speech at the Ministry about how you believed in change and that even the worst people can be redeemed. Either way would show that at least one of us wanted to be the same.”  
  
Potter turned to face him. He had a complex expression on his face. Draco hoped that meant he was thinking about what Draco had said.   
  
“But you don’t get to say everyone has the chance to change and then not allow me to change. I’m going now.”  
  
Draco walked out of the room. It felt wonderful to be the one doing the avoiding for once, making decisions the way Potter had without telling him a thing. At least Draco had  _told_ Potter what bothered him.  
  
There were quiet corners of the library. Draco went to study there, and ignored the people who still flinched and drew away from him in the corridors. They hadn’t stood up in front of Merlin and half of wizarding Britain and made their little speech about redemption.  
  
It was time for Potter to decide if he really wanted to be the better person.  
  
*  
  
Harry stood in the doorway of the kitchen, carefully holding his mouth closed. It was watering so hard he feared he would flood the floor otherwise.  
  
The house-elves bustled around a cake so enormous that Harry couldn’t see the far wall past it. It was made mostly of chocolate, something he and Draco had agreed on, but they hadn’t been able to agree on the decorating. Therefore, the elves had compromised.  
  
Half the cake shone in red and gold, with a regular pattern of red flames and golden Snitches. A ramping lion stood on the top of that half of the cake, and its tail spilled into the pattern. Glittering sugar brooms rose on delicate spires from the sides, turning to chase whatever the nearest Snitch to them was. The spires were so delicate, in fact, that Harry didn’t know how they would move the cake if not for house-elf magic.  
  
The other side was green and silver, with deep emerald-colored waterfalls that parted around flying metallic dragons. The dragons all looked up as if paying homage to the silver snake that faced the lion on the top. Draco had chosen sugar flowers instead of brooms, but some house-elf enchantment made them appear to be opening and closing, creating dazzling patterns of lilies and roses and what was probably deadly nightshade, knowing Draco’s fondness for sneaking less than innocent jokes into apparently childish things.  
  
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Draco asked behind him, and laid his chin on Harry’s shoulder.  
  
“It’s going to kill people with all the sugar,” Harry said, reaching up and catching Draco’s arm in his hand. “Or at least rot their teeth.”  
  
Draco laughed softly before he moved up and stood beside Harry. “I rather think that’s Granger’s line, and not yours.” He glanced at Harry with his eyes glinting. “Your line is about how you’re going to be the better person.”  
  
Harry smiled. “What would make me the better person right now?”  
  
“Letting people have their fun, and not saying anything about sugar.”  
  
“Less strict requirements than last time.”  
  
Draco’s face stirred with what might have been shadows, but for the light in his eyes. “I remember.”  
  
*  
  
Harry walked towards the table where Malfoy sat in the library. He could feel the dread that churned in his stomach and made him feel like he would throw up with every step. He told himself that didn’t  _matter_. What did was answering the challenge Malfoy had handed him.  
  
Malfoy didn’t look up even when Harry stood right next to him. Harry had to admit that, for all that he had started it, Malfoy did avoiding even better than he did.  
  
Harry softly cleared his throat. Malfoy still refused to pay attention to him.  
  
 _Revenge._ But Harry didn’t mean to let the revenge last and Malfoy’s challenge go unanswered. He cast a spell that would make their words sound like a soft murmuring about homework and revising to everyone else in the library, and then focused back on Malfoy.  
  
“I’m sorry. I should have given you at least a chance to prove that you’d changed.”  
  
Malfoy lifted his head. His face was so neutral that it made Harry flinch. But Malfoy replied as though this was an ordinary encounter. “Yes, you should have.”  
  
He didn’t say anything else. Harry repressed a sigh of exasperation. Malfoy was going to make him fight for every inch of ground. But under the circumstances, Harry could understand why.  
  
Despite his speech at the Ministry that Malfoy kept reminding him of, speeches mostly weren’t Harry’s thing. He tried something else. “Would you like to come back to the room and study with me?”  
  
Malfoy looked up fast enough that he ended up wincing and rubbing the back of his neck. Harry didn’t smile. He only stood and looked earnestly at Malfoy, and Malfoy finally dropped his hand and stared at him in turn.  
  
“I thought you had revision with Granger and Weasley tonight.”  
  
“I’ve revised with them the past six nights. Well, except Tuesday, when we had Quidditch practice. They’ll understand.”  
  
Malfoy sat still. Harry waited. He had made as much of a sacrifice and a gift as he could. He only hoped Malfoy would accept it in the spirit it was offered.  
  
From the slow way Malfoy’s face was lighting up, it seemed he would.  
  
“Let’s go back to the room, then,” Malfoy said, and stood, and gathered his things. Without thinking, Harry reached out to pick up the largest stack of books, the way he would have with Ron.  
  
Malfoy watched him. And watched as Harry reached past his instinctive desire in the moment when he froze, and kept picking the books up.  
  
Malfoy smiled. That was when Harry knew it was going to be all right.


	2. Part Two

“We have to have food besides cake.”  
  
Draco made his voice as soft and smooth as he could. Harry had his back turned currently, and was digging into one of the ancient cupboards where Draco’s ancestors kept linen that Draco didn’t often use. He didn’t see the point in having a cloth that slipped like silk through your fingers if it would only get spots of sauce and juice and all the rest on it.  
  
“I don’t see why,” Harry said absently, turning around with a tablecloth that gleamed like moonlight. “What about this one?”  
  
“The house-elves have already chosen a tablecloth that works. And we can’t simply eat cake.”  
  
“It’ll take an army to demolish that cake. It might as well be an army of hungry Weasleys.” Harry held up the cloth over his head, studying it with an admiring eye. “I like this one.”  
  
“There’s no point. We have one. In the meantime, you know that your friends won’t thank us for feeding that much sugar to their children.”  
  
“They can leave the children at home. They don’t have much of an appetite anyway, as young as they are. The adults can eat the cake, and Ron and Hermione and Bill and Fleur can take pieces home for them.” Harry paused. “Percy  _is_ coming, right? I can never get all the way through one of his letters without my eyes glazing in boredom.”  
  
Draco sniffed. Percy Weasley was one of the few Weasleys whose company he genuinely enjoyed, at least in something other than a guarded and wary way. He had a sense of formality and proportion that Draco liked. “He is. His children and wife with him. And we need fruit. Vegetables. Other things.”  
  
He moved to the side, because Harry was staring so hard and with such determination at the tablecloth that Draco thought something was wrong. Then he caught sight of the way Harry was biting his lip, and his eyes narrowed.  
  
“You little  _shit_. You always intended to have other food!”  
  
“Of course I did.” Harry turned around and stuck his tongue out at him. “As if I want to listen to the way Ron and Hermione would complain if the only thing that Rose and Hugo got to eat at our party was  _sugar_.”  
  
“You sounded like you didn’t mind fooling me,” Draco muttered, but there was a warm feeling in his chest. He grabbed Harry around the shoulders with one arm and pulled him towards his own chest, nuzzling the back of his neck. “You remember joking like this?”  
  
“Yeah.” Harry tilted his head back and let his hands waver on the tablecloth until Draco took it from him and tossed it back into the cupboard. “Pretty well.”  
  
*  
  
Draco had been studying with Potter and actually sharing the same room as him sometimes for almost a month before he began to notice that Potter had a real sense of humor.  
  
Well, he had always known  _that_. The way that Potter spoke about Slytherins was its own kind of humor. But it had always been the kind Draco didn’t find funny, so he had ignored it as much as possible.  
  
This time, though, he came out of the bathroom just as Potter finished arranging some pink ribbons around a heart-shaped box. Potter studied it for a second, then snickered. Draco looked it over cautiously from a distance, but he didn’t think it looked dangerous.  
  
Then again, some of the Weasley twins’ pranks never did.  
  
“What is that?” Draco asked, as Potter picked up the box and swung it around in his arms. If it had a trick or joke inside, at least it wasn’t finicky. Potter seemed to have no hesitation about handling it like it was made of wood.  
  
Potter gave him a smile. “Come with me if you want to see something funny.”  
  
Draco wasn’t sure he did, not without an explanation, but he found himself following Potter anyway as he walked out of their room and down the twisting corridor the school had built to the door of Weasley’s and Blaise’s room. Draco found himself hanging back a little as Potter knocked smartly on the door. If this was part of a prank on Blaise, he wanted no part of it.  
  
Weasley, though, was the one who opened the door, yawning and knuckling at his eyes. Potter slid to one knee before him and held the extravagant pink box high above his head. Weasley froze in the middle of another yawn.  
  
“Will you allow me to declare my love for you in the middle of the corridor?” Potter asked, loudly enough to make some of the other doors open.  
  
Weasley’s jaw made it most of the way to his chest.  _The advantages of being so tall,_ Draco thought madly, holding back the mad urge to cackle at the same time. This was  _ridiculous_. And he still had no idea what was going on, or only a faint one.  
  
“Mate!  _Mate!_  You said—”  
  
“That I wasn’t in love with you, yeah,” Potter answered in a soft voice that went right under all the snickers and outright laughter that were starting around them. Draco thought he would have missed it if he wasn’t standing right behind Potter. “But you also went on and on about me possibly being that way. So I thought I would  _reassure_ you.”  
  
Draco blinked. He thought he was starting to understand. But not as fast as Weasley, who gave Potter a helpless glance, shook his head, and then grabbed Potter’s arms and hauled him to his feet. “Stop being  _ridiculous_ ,” he said, and raised his voice. “Harry is not in love with me!”  
  
“But he made you that pretty pink box!” Blaise called from behind Weasley, his voice sounding merrier than Draco had heard it all term. “That must mean he’s sincere.”  
  
“It’s one of George’s pranks,” Weasley suggested, and reached over and wrenched the box away from Potter. “Look—”  
  
He must have touched something the wrong way, or else the box really was a prank. The lid sprang off, and bits of pink ribbon and confetti rained on the floor, accompanied by small, glimmering stars of illusory light. Draco was so busy watching them that he almost missed what had happened to Weasley himself.  
  
Pink hair. Pink cheeks. Pink lips. He looked like Pansy when she was twelve and had slept with her makeup on, then accidentally made it permanent when she was trying to get it off.  
  
Draco worked his lips against the laughter, but he lost. Potter grinned at him over his shoulder.  
  
“Mate, what the  _hell_?” Weasley asked. He conjured a mirror and held it up, then recoiled in horror from the glass.  
  
Potter stepped towards him and lowered his voice, once again going right under all the snickers. “You ought to know better, Ron. Yes, I’m looking for a nice  _boy_ to date, as Hermione would put it. But I’ve never, ever fancied you. I told you it would be a joke if I did. Well, now there’s been the joke. Stop worrying about it, okay?”  
  
Draco gasped a little as two thoughts hit him, almost hurting, at the same time. His second one was,  _When did Potter decide he wanted to find a nice boy to date?_  
  
He buried the first thought. It hurt too much to think about right now.  
  
“Okay,” said Weasley, and Draco thought there was some shadow removed from Potter’s face when he said that. “ _Okay_ , mate.” He punched Potter in the arm. “Now, are you going to tell me how to remove this pink, or not?”  
  
Potter stood there thoughtfully for a minute, then shrugged. “You know, I didn’t think to ask George that.”  
  
Weasley’s jaw found new depths to travel to. “Mate—”  
  
“It’s all right, you can owl him, and I’m sure it’ll be fine,” said Potter loftily, and turned away from Weasley, back to their room. Along the way, he caught Draco’s eye, and winked.   
  
Draco followed him in silence, nodding and smiling absently when Potter demanded to know whether he was funny and whether Weasley hadn’t got what he deserved for getting all concerned and defensive about Potter wanting to date  _him_. He was more occupied with that first thought which had hit him, which kept re-emerging despite all the control Draco was exerting to put it back in its place where it belonged.  
  
 _What bloke wouldn’t_ jump  _at the chance to date Potter?_  
  
*  
  
“We’re—really going through with the bower idea?”  
  
Harry couldn’t believe it. Draco had mentioned that he wanted to decorate the front of the house to welcome the people who would soon be arriving for their party, but Harry had thought the ideas he was mentioning were extravagant fantasies, not something that he would actually put in place.  
  
Apparently, Harry had been the one fantasizing about Draco’s lack of desire to decorate. There was a long lattice that looked like wrought iron but which Harry knew would be made of some lighter, grey wood extending from outside the front door down most of the gravel path to the gates. It bent and twisted to follow the path, and it was decorated with shining, wide-blooming white roses.  
  
“That’s not a bower. I don’t know where you got that word.” Draco had come up behind him and was frowning heavily at him.  
  
“It’s an arbor, then,” Harry said, and raised a hand when Draco opened his mouth, probably to tell him off. “Whatever word you want to use. I didn’t think you would actually do it.” He looked at the decorated thing again and shook his head.  
  
When he turned back, Draco’s eyes were slitted and his head tilted as though he was listening to some distant sound. “Why would you think I was less than serious?”  
  
Harry sighed soundlessly. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have doubted you.”  
  
Draco smiled back at him and swirled away to tell the house-elves something else. Harry watched him and shook his head.   
  
He should have remembered how serious Draco was about decorations, or at least those decorations that wouldn’t cause him any trouble to put up.  
  
*  
  
Harry watched Malfoy as carefully as he could. For the past fortnight, or almost, Malfoy had been twitchy. He would sigh and glance at the walls and then away again. Harry would have thought he was looking for something, but he never seemed to look at the same wall twice in a row. Instead, it was as if he really expected or wanted something to be there that simply wasn’t.  
  
Harry finally asked, when he thought it was going to drive him mental if Malfoy glanced and sighed one more time. “What is it? Is there something I can do that would make you feel more at home here?”  
  
Malfoy turned around in his chair, staring at him, but Harry stayed in one place and gave him a steady stare back. He didn’t know what was going on, only that it was obviously bothering Malfoy, and now that they were getting along, he didn’t think it was so unusual of him to offer to cure it.  
  
Malfoy fidgeted with his fingers in his lap for a second, and finally whispered, “Back at the Manor, there would be all sorts of decorations for Halloween by now.”  
  
Harry waited a second himself, so he wouldn’t come out with something stupid about being surprised that the Malfoys celebrated Halloween. Then he nodded. “And you want to put some decorations up here?”  
  
“The Great Hall has them. Enough of them. I really ought to be satisfied. But…” Malfoy looked as if he was pinching his thigh.  
  
“There can be some here, too,” Harry said, deciding that was the source of his reluctance. He wanted to have the decorations up, but he thought Harry would think they were silly or stupid.  
  
Harry himself didn’t feel that great an impulse to decorate. Halloween was always going to be the night his parents died and he was left an orphan to him. And he wasn’t a kid anymore; he didn’t want to get sick eating sweets just because it was something Dudley got to do and he didn’t.  
  
That didn’t have anything to do with decorations, though, and Malfoy wanting them. Harry drew his wand and turned to the wall, concentrating for a second. Then he nodded and waved his wand.  
  
“ _Creo vespertilio!_ ” he said, and then turned around and pointed his wand at the height of the wall above the bathroom door and said it again.  
  
A black wave of light leaped out of his wand and hit the wall, where it formed into a transparent dark bat that began to flap its wings enthusiastically. Harry put another one above the door out into the corridor, and then tried to remember the word for apple. He had to give up, but Malfoy murmured a quiet word beside him, and some orange ones appeared hanging in garlands that dangled from side to side of the room.  
  
Harry smiled at him. “There you go. Maybe we can look up some more spells to do it later. I’m afraid that’s about my limit.”  
  
Malfoy looked at him in silence for a second. Then he said, “And you did it for me.”  
  
“Well, yeah,” Harry said, and shrugged as Malfoy went on looking at him. “I mean, I wouldn’t have decorated if you hadn’t said something. But it’s not like I hate it.” He sat down and looked up at the orange apples. They would need some red ones, he thought, to go with them.  
  
“It’s nothing compared to what will be in the Great Hall later,” Malfoy said softly.  
  
Harry grinned at him. “Yeah, but we’ll get some sweets from Honeydukes. We won’t have as many, but it’ll be better-quality. And just for us.”  
  
Malfoy paused for long enough that Harry had to keep looking at him instead of turning back to his homework. “Why, Harry Potter,” he finally said, and his voice was stilted a little out of true, “are you inviting me to a private Halloween celebration?”  
  
“It could be that I am,” said Harry, and considered him. “The question is whether you’ll want to join me or not.”  
  
“I do,” said Malfoy, and his face was soft and glowing with sincerity. Harry thought that it was a rather good look on him. He wondered how many people had ever got to see it.  
  
 _Well, I’m one of the lucky ones,_ he thought, and smiled at Malfoy as he pushed his chair over towards him. “Then let’s start planning our trip to Honeydukes, and whether anyone else deserves any of those sweets or not.”  
  
Malfoy laughed. Harry found himself staring, and decided that was permissible. Malfoy was lovely when he laughed.  
  
 _Maybe the solution to some of my problems isn’t as far away as I think._  
  
*  
  
“Did we forget to put up banners?”  
  
Draco leaned back lazily on the wall of the kitchen as he ate his mini-lunch—to the squeaking distress of the house-elves, he had decided that he was too busy to sit down and have them prepare a special meal—and watched Harry checking things off on a list. His own treacle tart was dripping off his fingers onto the page, but it wasn’t like they would need it after today.  
  
 _He likes to decorate just as much as I do._ The difference was that Harry didn’t think of it like that. He would bury himself in details later, instead of planning ahead and wanting to surprise their visitors with something beautiful the way Draco did.  
  
“We  _did_ forget to put up banners.” Harry looked up with a faint frown and sucked down the rest of his treacle tart in a way that never failed to make Draco’s bones liquefy. “I remember now. We had that argument about what they were going to say.”  
  
“I couldn’t come up with anything good to say,” Draco told him. “Everyone already knows what kind of party they’re here to celebrate, and the house-elves will welcome them. That takes away the two most pertinent possibilities right there.”  
  
Harry turned and gave him a bigger frown. “Then you decided we didn’t need them?”  
  
“I thought we did. I simply couldn’t come up with anything for them to say.”  
  
Harry snorted. “It’s not often that you’re wordless.”  
  
Draco snorted back. “And most of the time, when I am, you have something to do with it.”  
  
*  
  
By Christmas, they were getting on better than Draco could ever have imagined. And he didn’t think it was because Potter had made a promise to McGonagall or anything tiresome like that, either.  
  
They had shared a private Halloween celebration after all, and other private moments since then—a quiet word here when one of them looked ready to explode, a touch to a hand that defused a confrontation with someone else, sitting by each other in class and competing silently to take the best notes. Draco felt as though someone had lit a fire in his chest that would and  _could_ burn steadily, and would go on burning even if someone tried to take the kindling away.  
  
Weasley sometimes gave him flat glances, as if he thought Draco was trying to seduce his best mate and was trying, himself, to decide what to do about it. Granger sometimes watched them thoughtfully, and so did Longbottom. Most of the other eighth-year students were preoccupied with their own problems.  
  
Draco knew he was going to pass his NEWTS. He had seldom studied so well as he did sitting beside Potter in the library, or their room, or even with Potter’s friends, on the days when Potter wanted to be with them and Draco didn’t want to leave his side. Everything was fine as long as Draco kept his mouth shut, and he had learned to do so in the face of some rather extreme provocation.  
  
No one else seemed to notice that silence and that good studying, except Potter, and then his glances were lingering in the way that Draco had learned to meet with a flush in his cheeks.  
  
Two days before Christmas—a holiday neither of them were going home for—Draco opened his eyes and found Potter sitting on his bed, contemplating Draco. “Draco,” he said, trying the word on for size.  
  
Draco blinked sleepily at him for a few seconds before figuring it out. Even after all the silence and shared moments, this was the first time Potter had used his name.  
  
He stayed speechless, and that was probably a good thing. It meant he couldn’t speak and ruin the mood as Potter knelt in front of him, looked him in the eye for a long, motionless moment, and then kissed him.  
  
He  _could_ return it, and he did it, lest Potter think he was kissing a statue. In seconds, Potter’s hands were wild and greedy in his hair, tugging Draco to the side so he could kiss him better, and Draco rolled on his bed and reached up.  
  
Potter came down to him in a smooth leap like the moment a trout leaped out of water.  
  
Draco closed his eyes and wrapped himself deep in Potter’s warmth, and let concerns that were larger than that minute, that space of seconds and happiness and peace, go.


	3. Chapter 3

“Hi, you lot. Thanks for coming.”  
  
Harry hugged Hermione, then solemnly shook hands with Ron and Hugo. Rose had nodded to him and slipped past him to examine the illustrations of books Draco had put up on the walls of the entrance hall. Harry knew Draco had done it specifically for Rose, but since no one would believe that and Draco would deny it if confronted, Harry just stood there and watched in silent enjoyment as Rose watched them.  
  
 _Only six years old and she’s already so much like her mum._  
  
“Do tell me there’s something other than sugar here,” Hermione whispered to him. She sounded weary already. “Molly spent yesterday filling Rose and Hugo full of biscuits when they were over at her house.”  
  
Harry blinked. “I thought Rose wasn’t as bad as Hugo when it came to reacting to sugar.”  
  
“Most of the time.” Hermione looked at her daughter over Harry’s head, her face a little grim. “But when she gets quiet like this and stares instead of asking questions…it means it’s right before the danger period begins.”  
  
Harry chuckled and turned around. “Did you want some lunch?” he called to Hugo.  
  
“ _Cake!_ ”  
  
“No, not yet,” said Harry. “Vegetables first. And all the fruit you want. And some bread and butter.” He looked back at Hermione for a moment. He had thought she might get upset about butter as well, although in general she was only her parents’ daughter when it came to sugar.  
  
Hermione snorted and waved her hand. “Compared to what they’ve  _been_ eating? That’s more than all right.” She then turned to Ron and lowered her voice, and Harry heard what he suspected was the edge of a long-running argument. “Ron, you really need to tell your mother to…”  
  
Harry hurried Rose and Hugo out of the room and into the kitchen, and not just because he didn’t want them to hear the arguments that their parents always had about how much Molly spoiled the kids. Harry didn’t need to hear it, either. It was the one running sore in Ron and Hermione’s marriage, and Harry was tired of their attempts to get him to take sides.  
  
“Here we are!” Harry sang, and settled Rose and Hugo at the kitchen table. The house-elves had covered up the cake or moved it; Harry didn’t know which one, and frankly, that was all right with him. “Snazzy!”  
  
The kids’ favorite house-elf popped up with silver banners hanging from his ears, bowing again and again with a beaming smile all over his face. “Snazzy is having nice food for young Master and Mistress Weasley!” he said, and clapped his hands. There was a puff of purple smoke—which Harry knew very well the house-elves never needed to make food appear; that was all a show for Rose and Hugo—and a huge mound of sliced fruit and vegetables appeared in the middle of the table.  
  
Harry hid a smile. Even Hugo’s whining for cake calmed in the face of that mound. The colors of the sliced berries and carrots and lettuce and all the rest of it shone like the cake, and sometimes Harry thought that was all little kids wanted: something shiny to impress them.  
  
Draco came in then, with an oblique glance at Harry. Harry knew what it meant. People were supposed to eat  _outside_ , at the tables that Draco and the elves had carefully set up.  
  
Harry looked calmly back. Draco wasn’t the one who would have had to deal with Rose and Hugo being hungry until they got out there.  
  
Draco sniffed in response and turned to helping Harry entertain the children. Harry hid another smile. They knew each other that well now, they could know what the other one was saying and communicate without words.  
  
It hadn’t always been that way, of course.  
  
*  
  
Harry knew that he liked kissing Malfoy—Draco, as he usually thought of him now. He also knew that he was blazingly, fragilely happy around him, and he didn’t want that happiness to go away.  
  
But dear  _Merlin_ , Draco was being  _such a git_  right now.  
  
“I don’t know why you can’t tell them to leave you alone.”  
  
Harry stared at the ceiling and waited for some kind of inspiration to come to him that would tell him how to handle his angry boyfriend. It didn’t. In the end, Harry had to turn around and put the best smile he could on his face.  
  
“Because they want to see me. They didn’t get to see me over the Christmas holidays, since they went home.  _We_ were here. We spent all our time together. I promise, Draco, I’m not going to suddenly change my mind and run off with Ron, whatever impression you might have got from that prank.”  
  
Draco sulked, his face turned steadily away from Harry, his eyes on the far wall. Harry shook his head finally, and stood up. “I’m going to the library to meet Ron and Hermione, then,” he said.  
  
Draco’s shoulders hunched.  
  
“You’re welcome to come with me,” Harry offered, even though he’d also made that offer before, and it hadn’t changed anything. Draco kept saying that he didn’t want to watch Harry spend time around his friends. He wanted Harry all to himself, and he thought he could only do that in the privacy of their room.  
  
Draco hunched further.  
  
Harry finally sighed, made sure he had all his books in his bag, and started to walk out the door.  
  
“If you walk away from me, we’re  _through_.”  
  
Harry halted, but he didn’t turn around. He spent a moment working through that, considering what it implied, that Draco would give him an ultimatum like that. Then he nodded and said, “Okay. If that’s your choice.”  
  
“Harry!”  
  
Harry turned around, just in time to catch Draco, who was sprinting towards him. Draco grabbed him, and Harry grunted and staggered and tried to keep from falling over. He  _did_ end up dropping his bag with all his books, loudly enough that someone thumped on the wall and called an irritated sound down the corridor.  
  
Harry put his hands awkwardly over Draco’s shoulders. Draco was whispering again and again, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t leave me, I’m sorry…”  
  
“That’s not what I wanted to do,” Harry sighed into his ear. “And I didn’t mean to make you have to abase yourself to me to apologize. It’s just—I  _do_ want to spend time with my friends, Draco. And you can come with me or you can stay here. It’s really your choice. But I can’t just give up time with them to stay with you.”  
  
Draco’s shoulders tightened, and he looked up with such a devastated face that Harry thought he would pull back and tell Harry to go on. But instead, he said, “I’m being pathetic.”  
  
“You want me to stay with you. I understand.” Harry didn’t want to lose Draco, either. He tried to say that, but ended up with, “I really want to be with you. I just—I don’t want to give up everyone else to have you. Would you want to give up your family?”  
  
Draco flinched a little, maybe at the thought that his family would object as hard to Harry as Harry’s friends might to Draco, although Harry knew that was certainly true. Then he stepped back and nodded. “I’m going with you to the library. It’s just—do I have to apologize?”  
  
“You have to not interrupt them and not insult them,” Harry told him. “That’s all. Be as reasonable and polite as you would with most other people.”  
  
“What happens if they insult  _me_?”  
  
“Then I’ll tell them to stop,” Harry said firmly. “And they will. Or I’ll walk away from them and wait until they apologize.” He paused when he saw how stricken Draco’s face looked. “What is it now?” If anything, he would have thought Draco wanted to be defended from Ron.  
  
“I don’t want to make you lose your friends, either,” Draco whispered. “That’s the  _opposite_ of what I want to do. I want to make you more happy, not less.”  
  
Harry gently reached out and petted his hair. Draco leaned into him with a sigh. “And that proves why I want to be with you,” he said gently. “But I want you to be happy too, Draco. Not always feeling like you come second to Ron and Hermione. And I know I won’t have to wait long for them to apologize. If nothing else, Hermione would probably make Ron do it before we could even get out of the library.”  
  
Draco gave a wobbly smile, but he didn’t seem convinced. Harry sighed a little; he supposed this was something that only experience would persuade Draco of. “Come on, then,” he said, and led the way to the library.  
  
All the way there, he kept one arm wrapped securely around Draco’s shoulders, and only raised an eyebrow when they got to the library and Ron looked at him with a dubious expression. And Ron didn’t make a fuss, and Hermione went on wrapping Draco into their study session as if he’d been there all along.  
  
Halfway through the study session, she did ask Harry to stop humming. Harry hadn’t even known he was doing it. He was that happy.  
  
*  
  
“Hullo, Malfoy.”  
  
Draco gravely shook Percy Weasley’s hand. He had already decided that he would probably never be able to get Percy to refer to him by his first name, although Percy didn’t seem to mind when Draco did it to him. But that didn’t matter. Percy was always scrupulously polite and wanted to know what was happening in Draco’s life, and that was more than Draco could say for some of the people who pretended to be closer to him.  
  
“Hello, Percy. How are things going in the Ministry?”  
  
Percy always shook his head and clucked over the Ministry like a hen with a bunch of stupid chicks, and he did it now. “You wouldn’t believe some of the laws they want to pass. If they imagine— _Lucy_!”  
  
Draco turned around. Percy’s younger daughter had toddled up to the sides of the bower—as Draco kept annoyingly calling it in his head since Harry had called it that—and started pulling some of the white roses off. Draco gently spelled the roses free and wound them higher up, where Lucy couldn’t touch them. They still had thorns, because it made them easier to thread through the wood. At least Lucy hadn’t had the chance to stab herself before Percy caught her.  
  
“I’m sorry about that,” said Percy magisterially as his wife, Audrey, a shy woman with auburn hair whom Draco hadn’t ever heard speak in full sentences, came forwards to scoop up Lucy. “If I’d known she was going to do that, I would have stopped her.”  
  
This time, he was shaking his head over his own daughter instead of the Ministry. Draco found it mildly funny, but he didn’t want Percy to think he was really angry. “No harm done. At least she didn’t stab herself.”  
  
“That might have taught her to keep her hands to herself,” Percy muttered, but he quieted under the glare his wife gave him. Audrey wasn’t nearly as stern with her children.  
  
“She’s a child,” Draco said, smiling to ease the tension. “I don’t expect perfect behavior.”  
  
Shrieks came from the back of the Manor, and Draco turned around. He knew Harry would be glad to see him and have some companions for Rose and Hugo, who were trying for a platoon of adults. “Do you want to sit down? I can take Lucy and Molly to the back.”  
  
“No, no, we’ll accompany you,” said Percy, waving his hand. “And I can’t imagine that you’re much interested in reports on the Ministry, Malfoy. What are  _you_ up to these days?”  
  
Draco talked about his days in polite detail until they reached the back of the Manor. Yes, Harry was with Rose and Hugo, looking martyred. When he raised his head, his eyes fixed on Draco gladly, and his mouth twitched a little.  
  
Draco smiled and deliberately moved a little to the side as he led Lucy and Molly to join the fun, letting Harry see his profile and the line of his hip. Then he looked back at Harry and smirked at the heat in his eyes.  
  
It was even more fun to tease Harry when he  _knew_ he was doing it.  
  
*  
  
“Will you  _please_ stop doing that? You’re driving me crazy!”  
  
“What?” Draco raised his head and stared at Harry. They’d been silent pretty much the majority of the evening, concentrating on their separate books. Draco had a NEWT in Arithmancy to study for, which Harry didn’t. Harry was concentrating on Charms.  
  
“You really don’t know you’re doing it?” Under Draco’s blank look, Harry groaned and flopped back on the bed. “Great. You didn’t. And now I’m the one who looks like a pervert for bringing it up.”  
  
“I can’t tell what’s supposed to be perverted if you don’t actually  _tell me_ ,” Draco said. He knew he sounded petty, but he was genuinely irritated. Harry acted as though he was so inconvenienced by something he didn’t know Draco was doing, then he wouldn’t even tell him about it so Draco could stop?  
  
 _Unless he doesn’t actually want me to stop._  
  
“It’s nothing. Forget it.”  
  
Harry was looking away from him, flushing. Draco tried to remember the various things he’d been doing that day, and which ones might get a strong reaction. He sucked on his bottom lip, and saw Harry snap to attention.  
  
Draco grinned. He  _had_ to grin. “Really?” he asked, and arched his neck back a little so Harry could get a better view of his lip. He paused, and he saw from Harry’s half-open mouth and dilated eyes that he was waiting. Then he began to suck again.  
  
Harry was across the room in a second, and Draco’s Arithmancy book fell in a clatter of pages that meant at least some were probably bent. Draco couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment, even if a relevant equation was torn.  
  
Harry pushed himself onto Draco and Draco onto the bed, and rolled on top of him, kissing furiously. Draco gladly went with that, and with the way Harry pulled off their clothes—roughly, Draco almost choking when the collar caught around his neck—and with the way that Harry reached for his wand.  
  
But he did gasp a little when Harry waved the wand and he felt a sharp sensation in his arse that became a soft, wet one. Draco squirmed and lifted his legs, trying to peer underneath himself, and Harry caught one of his knees, staring down at him.  
  
“Are you going to be okay with this?” he asked softly.  
  
“I’ve never done it before, so I don’t know.”  
  
Draco was only telling the truth, but it made Harry’s face soften and gleam and  _glow_ in the way that nothing else could have, Draco thought. Harry nodded once and gently scooped up Draco’s legs so he was holding them off to the sides. Then he shuffled back and got a pillow and slid it underneath Draco.  
  
“Okay?” he whispered when he got up near him.  
  
“Put some lube on your cock, too,” Draco muttered. He could barely get out the words without sounding like a bee buzzing, he thought, weak and pathetic. But he knew they had to do this much. He’d  _read_ that much in some of the books he’d been sneaking out of the library since he and Harry started dating.  
  
“Right.”  
  
Harry was blushing like a Weasley as he reached down and coated his cock. And then he was rocking back and forth and  _keening_ like a Weasley—not that Draco wanted to imagine that, and he was trying not to—trying not to come. Draco knew he laughed, and knew from Harry’s look that Harry would make him pay for it.  
  
But he didn’t care. That payment was likely to be the pleasantest form of punishment he could imagine.  
  
Harry at last began to ease forwards with his fingers. So he’d read the right books, too. Draco lay back and closed his eyes, then flinched and hissed when Harry’s fingers first slid in. But he clamped down when Harry tried to take his hand back, and shook his head without opening his eyes.  
  
“You’re doing fine,” he said.  
  
So Harry did it again, and seemed to be growing steadily more confident. Draco could even enjoy the sensation of multiple fingers opening him.  
  
But when Harry began to slide his cock into him for the first time, Draco did hiss and flinch and tense. It was nothing he’d planned on, it just happened, and Draco felt bad for it when he saw the way Harry paused above him and stared at him in concern.  
  
“Should I pull out?”  
  
Draco shook his head and hooked his heels behind Harry’s hips, although they promptly slid off again, tugging at him. “Come on. There’s going to be some good feeling to make up for what you just inflicted on me, right?”  
  
Harry smiled abruptly and began to move again. Draco set himself to endure as Harry slid further and further into him, as his muscles clenched and rebelled and cramped and settled down again, and then as Harry began to move smoothly in and out.  
  
Pleasure came sooner than Draco had expected. First searing pleasure that was like the pain Harry had caused him turned into happier heat, and Harry chuckled and thrust harder. “Found your prostate!” he said happily.  
  
“Yes, yes, you’re so clever,” Draco said, rolling his eyes, but he closed them in the next second. Harry was driving into him, and managing to hit Draco’s prostate most of the time like the git-naturally-talented-at-fucking that he was, and it was rocking Draco’s bed and mind and whirling thoughts.  
  
He did manage to get a grip on Harry’s arms at some point (he found the bruises the next morning). But it slipped away, and then  _everything_ slipped away, lost to the relentless whirl consuming Draco, like a two-edged maelstrom slipping down his body and up to his groin and down again to his head, and when it extended all through his body, Draco came.  
  
He missed the moment of Harry’s coming, but when he opened his eyes and saw Harry still lying dazed and exhausted on his chest, he thought that was all right. He would have a lot more opportunities to see it.  
  
*  
  
“Draco?”  
  
Harry rounded the corner into the kitchen, curious. Even though the gardens were full of Weasleys now and so Draco might avoid them for a bit, Harry would have thought he’d want to be there for the toasts and the presentation of the cake.  
  
Draco was standing in front of the table where the cake had rested earlier, running his fingers over something. Harry came up to him and stopped. Draco was touching the silver ring Harry had presented him with at the end of their final year at Hogwarts. Harry had sneaked into Hogsmeade and bought it for him as a surprise. It had a moonstone as the sole ornament. Harry had thought a diamond would be too serious, hadn’t been sure what else to choose, and had decided to pick something that looked interesting.  
  
“Draco?” Harry made his voice gentle. “The cake is waiting. And so are the kids.”  
  
Draco looked up. His eyes and hair made him look almost ethereal, beautiful and shimmering, about to fly away, like the moonstone. He stretched out his hand, and Harry walked up to him without hesitation and leaned against him as Draco kissed him, stroking his back.  
  
Harry could feel Draco’s ring pressing against his back and his own ring, purchased a day later and with an opal instead of a moonstone, brushing against Draco’s nape as they kissed.  
  
“Yes,” Draco said. “Let’s go out and face them. Together.”  
  
“You make it sound as if they were dragons instead of Weasleys,” Harry murmured, but he was smiling as he turned Draco around and led him out the door.  
  
*  
  
Harry woke with a start. It was late at night, he knew, since the fire had burned down to an ember. The house-elves would come in to tend it, but not until midnight, when they usually made the round of all the new rooms that the castle had added.  
  
Harry eased back and stretched his spine until it cracked. Then he looked down at Draco, and reached out to stir a hand through his hair.  
  
Draco slept easily, innocently, his lips slightly parted and his breathing a soft whistle. Harry knew, looking at him, that no one else would ever have decided that he was once an evil git rather than Harry’s lover.  
  
 _And my love._  
  
Harry touched Draco’s head again, and watched Draco stir and open his eyes to look at him. His face was filled with soft contentment.  
  
“Good morning,” Draco whispered.  
  
Even though it was the wrong time of day, Harry thought,  _It really is._  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
